7 Firefox Extensions I Can’t Do Without

I am a sucker for efficiency. I like being super efficient, a good time manager, productive and well, again, efficient. I would romance efficiency, if that was humanly possible. As a writer, I have to research lots of links, scourge through the web for information and perform insane number of super-powered, unearthly moves to gather my research. Usually, what I require, other than my superpowers, is knowledge of what I need to find, effective searching techniques and, not to forget, a browser for all of my antics.

Since my browsing is usually a combination of Firefox-ing and Chrome-ing, with Firefox taking up nearly 90% of the browsing time, I have some extensions/plugins to enhance my browsing experience and meet my needs. Today, allow me to take you through the 7 Firefox extensions that have made life easy for me.

FireShot is a quick way to take a screenshot of the webpage you are viewing and edit as per requirement. It takes a complete view of the Firefox window, scrolling included, and makes the screenshot ready for uploading, saving, printing etc.

Basically, FireShot is my tool to capture structure and design of a particular resource. It has helped me build a reference sorts of content flow and design and has made analysis of these structures quite easy. There is a Pro version of the extension which adds many other features for a fee of $35.

FastestFox is the holy grail of efficient browsing in Firefox. It lets you download links and videos at the press of a button, automatically loads the next page for quickviewing, pulls up definitions of marked words, improves searching and basically makes Firefox zoom through repetitive tasks.

I am totally in love with this extension as it lets me perform a lot of tasks quickly. It also functions as a combination of several plugins in one nifty package and is also light on the system. Utter bliss!

Let’s face it, we don’t like to be restricted. I perceive internet to be a free flow of ideas and if I see a regionally blocked site, well, I just have to find a way across it. That is where Proxies kick in for me. FoxyProxy is one such tool that lets me access sites that are blocked.

FoxyProxy automatically switches your connection over proxy servers and lets you know when a proxy is in use. It also keeps a log of proxy usage so that you can always go back to record what, when and why.

A very simple tool for achieving a very simple yet harrowing task, Copy Plain Text lets you copy anything from any webpage without its formatting. It circumvents the annoyingly painful process of copying something into notepad and then re-copying it for losing its formatting.

Copy Plain Text speeds up my copy pasting work by giving me simple, pure text which I can use as desired. It is mainly an OCD thing, having clean text, and Copy Plain Text meets the purpose.

Let’s face it, some websites are hardcoded for best functionality in Internet Explorer, that painfully outdated, bugged, unproductive browser. So what do I do when I come across such a site and don’t want to use Internet Explorer? I use IE Tab.

IE Tab lets me deploy the functionality of IE in a tab of Firefox temporarily. It not only helps me open IE optimized websites but also allows me to see how a particular piece of HTML code would look in IE.

Xmarks Sync is a bookmark-cum-open tabs synchronizer that lets me save my bookmarks and open tabs, ready for access anywhere, on any PC. It saves the data in Xmarks Web Account and keeps it available for access with a single login.

I got into the habit of using this plugin when I lost all my bookmarks due to an emergency format of the system. In the hurry of backing up important data, I forgot my bookmarks. It was painful, I still shudder at the prospect of data lost in that debacle.

There is nothing like listening to good music while writing. With 19 unique music channels and a huge variety, Online.FM Radio is your fix for music while browsing. Comprising Party, Disco, House, Classic Rock, Jazz, Trance and many other genres, this little plugin not only plays but also keeps a database of artists, song information, latest happenings in the music world etc.

Conclusion

These Firefox plugins have saved me several times in the past and I am guessing that they would continue doing so in the future. I hope you enjoyed reading about my absolutely essential plugins. If you have been using any of these, do let me know what you think about them. If you have a suggestion or a better replacement for any of those mentioned above, please let me know, I am always open for experimenting. Thanks for reading!